Israeli Forces Enter Gaza's Second-Largest City, 9 ‘Dead’ In Strike At School

Israel increased its shelling of Gaza's second-largest city on Tuesday.

Representational Image.

Source : AP

Israeli forces engaged in ground battle in the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Yunis on Tuesday, according to the army, as it escalates operations in its fight against Hamas, while hospitals strained to deal with the influx of Palestinian dead and injured, news agency Reuters reported. Israel claimed its forces, backed by jets, had entered the heart of Khan Younis and were encircling the city in what seemed to be the largest ground attack in Gaza since a truce with Hamas fell apart last week. "We are in the heart of Jabalia, in the heart of Shejaiya (in northern Gaza), and now also in the heart of Khan Yunis," Southern Command chief Major General Yaron Finkelman stated in an official statement issued by Israeli army, detailing "the most intense day since the beginning of the ground operation."

He said that Israeli soldiers were also battling in Jabalia, a huge urban refugee camp and Hamas hotspot in northern Gaza near Gaza City, and Shuja'iyya, east of the city.

The al Qassam Brigades, Hamas' armed branch, said its members had destroyed or damaged 24 Israeli military vehicles and snipers had killed or injured eight Israeli troops in continuing fighting near Khan Younis.

Separately, Gaza health officials said that several people were killed in an Israeli airstrike on residences in Deir al-Balah, north of Khan Younis. According to Dr. Eyad Al-Jabri, administrator of the Shuhada Al-Aqsa Hospital there, at least 45 people were murdered. Reuters was unable to access the scene or confirm the toll.

According to witnesses, a strike damaged a school in Khan Younis on Tuesday, where hundreds of displaced people were refuge, AP reported. Hundreds of injured were transported to adjacent Nasser Hospital, including a small child in a bloodied shirt whose hand had been blasted off. Women and children mourned in the mortuary over the strike's at least nine victims. The Israeli military made no quick reaction.

In a brutal new phase of the conflict, Israel increased its shelling of Gaza's second-largest city on Tuesday, sending ambulances and private automobiles rushing into a local hospital carrying wounded people, AP reported.

Under pressure from the United States to avoid more mass deaths in the fight with Hamas, Israel claims it is being more precise as it expands its operation into southern Gaza after obliterating most of the north. However, Palestinians claim there are no safe zones, and many worry that if they leave their homes, they will never be permitted to return.

Aerial bombardment and the ground attack have already displaced three-quarters of the territory's 2.3 million residents, and new orders to evacuate neighbourhoods near Khan Younis are pushing people into ever-smaller portions of the already-tiny coastal strip.

Ambulances took hundreds of injured persons to the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, including a small child in a bloodied shirt whose hand had been blown off.

"What's happening here is unimaginable," said Hamza al-Bursh, who lives in Maan, one of many neighbourhoods in and around Jerusalem that Israel has forced inhabitants to evacuate. "They strike indiscriminately."

Residents reported forces pushed to Bani Suheila, a community immediately east of Khan Younis, after heavy bombings. According to Halima Abdel-Rahman, who escaped to the town early in the conflict from her home in the north, they could hear bombs all night.

“They are very close,” she said. “It’s the same scenario we saw in the north.”

Satellite images taken on Sunday revealed around 150 Israeli tanks, armoured personnel carriers, and other equipment just under 6 kilometres (4 miles) north of the city centre.

In the early days of the war, Israel ordered a full-scale evacuation of northern Gaza and has banned individuals who fled from returning. It has ordered the evacuation of roughly two dozen neighbourhoods in and around Khan Younis in the south. This limited the region in central and southern Gaza where residents may seek sanctuary by more than a fourth.

“Nowhere is safe in Gaza, and there is nowhere left to go,” Lynn Hastings, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories, said Monday. “The conditions required to deliver aid to the people of Gaza do not exist. If possible, an even more hellish scenario is about to unfold,” he was quoted by AP in its report. 

Israel claims it must demolish Hamas' enormous military infrastructure and remove it from power to avoid a recurrence of the October 7 strike that sparked the conflict. During the surprise attack over the border barrier, Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists killed around 1,200 individuals, the majority of whom were civilians, and captured approximately 240 men, women, and children.

The military claims it takes every effort to protect people and accuses Hamas of using them as human shields while the militants battle in densely populated areas with labyrinths of tunnels and bunkers, rocket launchers, and sniper nests.